Superman #9 Review and *SPOILERS*

This Issue's Gonna Cost You An Arm and A Leg..... Well, Maybe Just A Leg

Written By: Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason
Art By: Doug Mahnke, Jaime Mendoza, Trevor Scott, Wil Quintana, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 19, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's time to get back to Dinosaur Island, where we saw our Super Father and Son team transported to in the previous issue after Jon went and built a crazy ass teleportation device in the Fortress of Solitude.  If that sounds crazy...... well, it's even crazier when you realize that he made this thing for his school science project.  Kid totally needs more parental supervision going on, especially with how overprotective Superman seems to want everyone to think he is......... You can't just say it Superman, you gotta show it.  It's on this Land of the Lost trip that our duo found the resting place of the World War II team, The Losers and their final message to the world that was torn right out of the The New Frontier story as a way to honor Darwyn Cooke since his passing.  Let's jump into this issue and see where this Dinosaur Island jaunt takes us in this Superman series and find out what's up with Jon's crazy science project inspired by a dream.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Superman and Superboy getting shot at by the somehow surviving Captain William Storm of The Losers, but since this seems to be another dimension, I guess time doesn't really factor in to Dinosaur Island.  After Superman disarms Storm and shows that he's no threat to him, the beginning of this issue is all about catching Captain Storm up on who won the war and how he looks great for his age........... the last part he's not really interested in.  After that though, it's time to get our heroes home and to do that they're going to need that teleportation device Jon created in the Fortress of Solitude........... which, oddly enough, Captain Storm has an idea about where it might be.  

Once Superman makes the Captain a new wooden leg and Storm arms himself up, the trio are off to the other side of the island to see if they can find their way home............ and Captain Storm tells us a disturbing story about how he domesticated a pterodactyl after he was almost fed to it........ What happens on Dinosaur Island, stays on Dinosaur Island.  Once our team get to where Storm's leading them, we see a big ass albino gorilla, who I originally thought was Ultra-Humanite out of nowhere, but instead I was shocked to see that this ape was actually a connection to issue #2 of this series where our father and son duo went up against that octopus, with the cybernetic doohickies on it.  Here though, this gorilla has a stockpile of odds and ends from World War II and for some reason has the same kind of doohickey on it as the octopus..... hence the connection.

In the end, it's a big old fight between our heroes and all the terrible things on Dinosaur Island, but eventually Jon finds his creation and once its in his hand, it starts to activate, but because Losers apparently don't leave people behind........ or escape terrible fates, Captain Storm decides to stay during the teleportation.  Once our father and son team are back in the Fortress of Solitude, the two contemplate what happened to them and why Captain Storm's false leg and the cybernetic thingamajig that Superman had in his hands aren't with them anymore.  While we're given no answers to these questions............ or why Jon dreamed up the design of this science project in the first place, what we do get is a ominous cliffhanger of a shadowed out figure holding the objects that Superman should have brought with him, while this figure stares at that cybernetic octopus from issue #2....... or at least one that's similar.

That's it for this issue of Superman and while I was originally on board with Captain Storm still being alive and having to confront what kind of strange future Superman is from, it quickly became a lot like the previous issue where we just saw our heroes fighting dinosaurs and odd ass creatures, not to mention that albino gorilla, who we're given no background on at all.  This really was a whole bunch of nothing besides for setting up our next arc and giving us some more moments of Clark and Jon bonding together.......... which I did enjoy, but overall I can't say I've been a huge fan of this two issue arc.  I will tell you though that this issue looked great and I loved looking at it, it's just that I would have liked a little more explanation about.......... well, everything that went on in this.  

Bits and Pieces:

Dinosaur Island is throwing a whole lot at us without much explanation at all and while this story seems to be just a way of honoring Darwyn Cooke, I would have liked a little more out of it so I could fully appreciate everything that was going on.  I did love the way the book looked though and all the touching moments between Clark and Jon, but overall I was a bit disappointed with this issue.

6.8/10